Two Types of Authority

There is official authority and there is spiritual authority, writes Doug Wilson in his excellent Father Hunger, and we need to know the difference:

The authority of office is like having the right chequebook with you. That is your name in the upper left-hand corner. It is your address, your account number. You are the authorised signatory on the account. The other kind of authority is like having money in the bank. If a man is bouncing cheques left and right, it will do no good for him to complain that he still has cheques left. I have seen many fathers who tried to write a big cheque that their children would clear for them, and they demanded that their children do this because they could prove (from the Bible) that it was their chequebook. I have been in counselling sessions trying to explain to a hapless father that his account had insufficient funds, with him trying to explain to me that he had read one of my books that taught that he, the father, was the owner of the chequebook. Both these assertions are quite true, but they are assertions about two completely different things.

Author info

Andrew is Teaching Pastor at King's Church London, and has theology degrees from Cambridge (MA), London School of Theology (MTh), and King's College London (PhD). He is a columnist for Christianity Today, and has written several books, including the upcoming Echoes of Exodus (Crossway, 2018) and Spirit and Sacrament: An Invitation to Eucharismatic Worship (Zondervan, 2018). Andrew is married to Rachel and they have three children: Zeke, Anna and Samuel.
Views he expresses here are his own, and do not represent those of Newfrontiers or any particular church.